Friday, January 20, 2017

Mot Målet 04 2016, the beginning of a new year

Happy new year everyone!

Mot Målet 4 of 2016

First of all, here is the latest issue of YWAM Norway magazine (click on the image above). Last year´s last issue. This time, the theme has been «Hearing God´s voice», and we got a lot of good responses on the issue, so that was really nice. Besides doing the layout for the magazine I also wrote a short post as the editor. Here is the english translation:

The first time I heard God´s voice he spoke about missions. I was in Iceland, standing on the roof of a barn. For the last days I had been scraping the weathered paint off the old planks of the outer wall. I had taken a gap-year to adventure around Iceland. And now I was thinking about expanding my gap-year into a lifestyle of travel and experiences.A thought struck me where I was standing on that roof in Iceland. «If I could do this for myself, then I can also do it for God.» It came as a challenge, and hit me with conviction. At the same time, I also felt that God gave me the freedom to choose what I wanted to do with what he had just spoken.I took the challenge and got myself ready to take a DTS in Norway the year after.Twelve year has passed since that summer day. «Hearing from God» has today become a pretty normal thing for me and my family. Something so precious that I would not want to let go, or go without it.In this issue of Mot Målet you can read how we continue with fulfilling what God has called us to do. We train young people for missions, contribute to (literally) give God´s word to the people of Norway. We send missions-team to the foreign places in the world, and with hospitality we meet the foreigners that have come to us.God has given us a big job to do, and with our own eyes we can see it developed and fulfilled step by step. It give us great joy and thankfulness when we for ourselves can see how God´s kingdom is growing.

In March I will be working on the next issue of our magazine. In the meantime, I am slowly getting more into digital publishing (finally). The online issue of the magazine is over at www.motmalet.no

Bible apps in Norwegian

At the beginning of the year we had the annual YWAM Norway staff conference again, and that was really busy and good. We were 400 people here at Grimerud. We had some really cool talks with a lot of people, but for now I will just mention one of them. YWAM international has developed a bible reading app which allows you to read the text as a story told. It shows who is talking to who, how much each person says, and the things each of these persons talk about. It is the same bible, but the way you read it engages you more into the biblical narrative. See sourceviewbible.com for more info about this app.
As a goal for this year, YWAM Norway is hoping to translate this app to Norwegian, so we have an engaging bible-app that we can present when we continue handing out bibles door to door in the rest of the country. This is a project that I hope I can be involved with.

Missions training

After the staff-conference, I was part of leading a missions training course for 22 students at the Nordland-DTS. This is the same Kairos-course that I had taken in November last year. Classroom teaching and leading small-groups aren´t things I do often, and I wanted to step out about practice both. At the same time, I got to learn understand more about missions, and God´s heart for all the people´s of this earth.

At the end of the Kairos-training week
all the students got their certificates.
These guys were in the small-group that I lead,
now they are in Nepal for their DTS-missions trip.

A family visit

Next month, we will be in The Netherlands for one week, from the 14th til the 21st. My sister Annemarie is getting married to Donál on the 18th. He is Irish, and they met in Ireland where she has been living for some years now. We are excited about being at their wedding, and meeting all of our new family.